Of fun fairs, falsehoods and Captain's hats
by Iceinherheart
Summary: Starling city fair only came around once every year, but in the five years that she'd called the city home, Felicity had never bothered to go. So by the time it rolled around that year, she'd entrusted that information to both Oliver and Thea. Turned out, that was a really bad idea.


Starling city fair only came around once every year, but in the five years that she'd called the city home, Felicity had never bothered to go. With a depressingly slim number of friend who lived in or near Starling, or who would have been even the slightest bit interested in fairs, she'd never had any motivation to peel herself away from her computer long enough to enjoy it alone. So by the time it rolled around that year, she'd entrusted that information to both Oliver and Thea.

Turned out, that was a really bad idea.

It had horrified the siblings more than she'd imagined that it would, but the two had a whole stockfull of childhood memories from the weeks it had been in town as they grew together, first with Robert Queen acting as chaperone to the terrible two, and then Oliver himself once he'd been deemed a responsible guardian by his parent.

So she was more than a little surprised when the usually docile (in the mornings at least,) Oliver hauled the down covers off of her heated skin to let the air rouse her.

"Nya!" She screeched, balling her knees up to her chest, reaching out for blindly for the covers again and wrapping herself back in the first fabric that her fingers touched, shivering as she blinked open her drooping eyelids. "Oliver! What the hell?"

"Come on, sleepy." He laughed, sinking down to sit on the side of the ridiculously elevated beds that were favoured in the Queen mansion, the ones that she had to physically climb onto to get in to. He began to tug on her earlobe gently, instantly, rubbing away the ache from the earrings she had worn the day before, but irritating her into consciousness at the same time, attempting to get her out of her bed on a Sunday, before noon. "I'm not going to go away until you get out of bed, so you might want to get up."

"Don't want you t' go away." She grumbled, clutching her pillow closer to her face, peeking up at him over the top. "I want you here, preferably with less clothes, keeping me warm." He chuckled again, fingers stroking across her cheek. He was doing that a lot more, lately - the smiling thing. He'd always done the touching thing, even if it had taken a huge leap from 'random touching' to 'constantly touching her'.

"Yeah, that's not going to happen." He pointed out, and she batted at the hand that was pulling at her ear, trapping his fingers between hers.

"Why?" She laughed, bringing his hand to her mouth to kiss his fingers. "Are you bored of me already?" She kept her tone as light as she could, sleep permeating her voice, smiling into his flesh. But Oliver's face changed, the easy smile and light eyes giving way to a deep frown, lines appearing between his brows.

"Hey," He stopped with the tugging then, sweeping her hair away from her face. "'Licity, that's never going to happen, you know that right?" And he smoothed his hand through her tangled hair, smiling gently at her when she offered a slightly less sleepy grin.

"Come back to bed then. Stop trying to wake me up." She blinked, trying to force her eyes to focus on him without her glasses. "And give me back my covers."

"No!" He argued, leaning over her to kiss the top of her head gently. "We're going out. You're going to get dressed, and I'm going to say right here, in these clothes, because we're going out and that won't happen if you keep trying to get me back in bed!" He reached behind him without looking and snagged her glasses from the bedside table, and slipped them on over the bridge of her nose. "So I'm keeping the covers. You can keep wearing my dressing gown instead."

"But I'm cold, Oliver!" She whined, reaching for him. "And I don't want to get up! I'm tired!" She reached up, hooking her arms around his neck and pulling him down to her. She tapped her nose up against his, smiling at him enthusiastically.

"Come get dressed then." He smiled, the challenge bright in his eye. "Don't make me pick you up." But she only laughed at him.

"That's not exactly something that you hear everyday. You telling me to put clothes on." She pushed up on his shoulders, sitting up with him and resting her head on his clavicle. "Just give me a minute to put together something decent to wear. I really must start keeping more clothes here, I'm running out of clothes to wear."

"Felicity…" Oliver sighed, standing from the bed and pulling her closer to him by her elbows, her forehead colliding with his nose accidentally, and she stretched forward to press her lips to his neck. He angled her head up, pressing gentle lips to the corner of her mouth, strong fingers moving to trace tender patterns over her soft flesh, wiping away the goosebumps. "Thank you."

"For what?" She tilted her head at him, her eyes bright and blue.

"Indulging me." He offered eventually.

"You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?" He nodded at her, even though they both knew that she already knew the answer. "The you don't need to thank me, Oliver." She pressed up on her knees to kiss him lightly. "You could tell me where we're going though, so that I know what to wear."

"You're a genius." He laughed, stepping away to let her get changed. "You'll work it out."

Unsurprisingly, she did. She knew from the moment he'd told her to dress 'Warmly and sturdily'. But she kept it quietly, waiting until she was climbing out of the car to tell him so. They'd stopped around midday to eat, which actually turned into sharing chips (most of which Oliver ate, in her defence), both still relatively full from the breakfast Raisa had left out for then when he's finally coaxed her down the stairs and into the colder area of the house.

"Queen." Called a familiar voice from behind them, and Felicity turned to beam at the newly promoted Captain Lance.

"Captain!" She grinned, waving happily. "Having fun?"

"Hello Sweetheart." Lance smiled softly at her. "I almost didn't see you there! I'd be having more fun if I was off duty, but you know what they say: 'No rest for the wicked', and all that."

"Well, if it helps, I don't think you're wicked." She gestured to the other side of the table they were sat at. "In fact, join us for a minute and prove that you're no where near wicked!"

"Well," Lance mock sighed, and he pulled the captain's hat from his head and carefully deposited it atop hers. "Whatever the Captain wants." She laughed happily, screwing up her nose as she pulled the hat further down over her eyes and tilting it at a funky angle.

"Yes, Mr Lance, Captain's orders." She grinned at him cheekily. "So sit."

"Alright, alright!" He laughed, falling onto the bench. "Give s msn time to comply, why dontcha!" He got himself settled then, before he turned to wink a Oliver, "Geez! If she's always like this, then I pity you, Kid."

"It's just one of those things, really." Oliver shrugged. "I can stand the bossyness, because it means that she hasn't left yet." Lance watched closely as Oliver pulled her into him, and she took the moment to wipe the somber look off his face by leaning in and ghosting her lips across his cheek. Lance stared harder.

"You know, I don't recall you ever being so affectionate with Laurel." He pointed out, and Felicity felt Oliver cringe against her side. Knowing him, he was probably internally cringing too. "I feel like I should be insulted on her behalf, but I'm more than relieved than anything."

"I didn't treat Laurel the way that I should have." Oliver admitted, and his grip on her hand tightened slightly, like he was reminding himself that she was actually there. He did that sometimes, she realized, double glances and extra tight hugs, the constant touching, like he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't dreaming. She'd wondered before if he'd ever had dreams like this. Now she knew he did. "Trust me, if I could go back and slap that idiotic kid that I was upside the head, and save her a lot of the pain that I caused her, I would. But I'm working on that now. I'm trying to be better than I was."

"And you're succeeding." Felicity reminded him, squeezing his hand back as she reached for the chips in the middle of the table with the other hand. "And, lets be honest, if you could go back and stop yourself from hurting Laurel, you'd probably stop yourself from getting on that boat too. And Sara."

"Things definitely would have been better for Sara if neither of you had gotten on that boat." Quentin pointed out sadly, mimicking her as he stole from the plate.

"Yeah they would have." Oliver mused beside her in that same guilty tone of voice that she heard from him all too often. "Not too sure about me though." He fixed his eye on her then, chip held halfway to her mouth and her head tilted automatically with confusion. "I might not have you if I didn't."

"Oh, you definitely wouldn't." She laughed softly, finishing off the chip rather than resorting to her terrible habit of chewing on her bottom lip. "Huh. That's quite a depressing thought, actually."

"Maybe we ought to stop talking about it then, hey?" Lance suggested, raising a hand to catch the attention of the nearest waitress. She recognised his badge immediately, even if his hat was still sitting firmly on Felicity's head, and came straight over to collect his order. "How are things with you? We haven't done our weekly coffee run in… months. I was beginning to worry you'd developed an allergy to sunlight until I saw you here."

"Oh no!" Felicity shook her head, sparing a small smile for the waitress as she trotted off to collect the older man's drink. "No allergy here. Except nuts. Which is a pretty common allergy, actually. People hear 'allergy' and their brain goes 'nuts'! Or maybe that's just me, since, you know, I'm allergic to nuts…" And she turned to Oliver beside her, screwing her nose up at him. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"Don't worry," He told her, leaning forward to brush his lips against her nose, so gently that she almost couldn't feel it. "It's adorable."

"So why no coffee?" Lance asked, the corners of his mouth pulling up until he was grinning at her. "Did you develop an allergy to that? Can you not drink coffee anymore?" He froze then for a second, the smile falling off his face. "Are you pregnant?"

"No!" Felicity laughed, dropping her head into her hands with a half playful, half serious huff of irritation. "No allergies, no babies. Not yet. I've started new hours at work, that's all!" She threw her arms out in disbelief, nearly smacking the returning waitress in the stomach. "Oh god, sorry! How did you get from 'I have to miss our coffee session today' to ' I'm pregnant'? Which, again, totally not, by the way."

"Thank you, darling." Lance offered the girl the note as she settled his drink down in front of him, waving away the change. "I don't know, Felicity! I worked out that Dinah was pregnant with Sara because she stopped eating pasta. It was a logical conclusion, in my mind."

"Totally not a logical conclusion!" She yelled, pointing a finger at him wildly. "And are you saying that I look pregnant?"

"Felicity! Stop!" Oliver cut in loudly, before Quentin had a chance to open his mouth, gripping the top of her arms to focus her. "Breathe. Nobody's saying you look pregnant!"

"Yeah, listen to your boyfriend, Sweetheart - wow, that's weird to say about you, Oliver." Lance stretched a hand across the space to take one of her hands before she took someone's eye out. "Besides, what if you were just not showing yet? You don't have to look fat to be pregnant, don'tcha know?"

"I need a coffee right now." She muttered, but she squeezed the captain's hand back tightly. "Or alcohol. Coffee or alcohol."

"I'm sure you'll do just fine without either." Oliver told her softly, readjusting the hat on her head. "Although, if you can't, there's a pretty big wine cellar under the mansion with more than one decent bottle of red waiting for you when you get home."

"You just can't say no, can you, Queen?" Lance smiled, but it was gentler, happier, all the same.

"To her?" Oliver asked back. "No. Never again."

"Well, someone might be getting a ring for her next birthday." Lance grinned at her, but the smile wouldn't quite go all the way up to his eyes, like he was sad about something."

"Maybe not quite that soon." Oliver sighed back, but unlike Lance, there was amusement in his eyes. "I think maybe I'll give her time to get out if she wants it first." And then there was the darkness in his gaze that she knew to expect, even if she was still wishing that one day she would be wrong, and he'd smile at her with all the light in his eyes that he deserved.

"Bad idea." Quentin told him with a grin, because all that sadness was now gone from his face, from both of them actually, but she could see that Lance was rather impressed with the answer that Oliver gave. "Speaking of birthday presents, I'm glad to see that you use mine. Even if it's not quite for the intended use." And her pointed at the pen in her hair that she'd used to secure the bun on the back of her head.

"Of course." She grinned mischievously. "It's the most common pen to appear in my hair. I don't want to waste the ink, which is why I don't actually write with it." She kept it in her hair quite often though, because of the novelty of it, and because Quentin had brought it for her, so she wanted to keep using it for as long as possible. She didn't use it as a makeshift hairpin when she was in the foundry any more though, for Digg and Roy's sake, because the pen just so happened to be a silver arrow spearing through her blonde hair, and normally, when she wore it like that, especially when the bun was messier than normal, Oliver _reacted_.

But her favourite thing about the pen, even though her and Oliver were really the only people who understood it, which was probably why she liked it so much, was that the ink was red.

"Does he…?" Lance trailed off strategically at the end of that particular sentence, jerking his head at Oliver, and Felicity giggled slightly to herself. Did Oliver Queen know she was working with the Arrow? She wondered at time how Quentin hadn't worked it out yet, even though she was glad that he hadn't.

"He knows." She nodded, reaching up to rotate the arrow in her hair between her finger and thumb the way she often saw Oliver do with the ones in his head.

"And he's okay with it?" Lance asked, shocked. "I'm still not sure if I am."

"I kind of had to be okay with it." Oliver shrugged pulling her hand away from the pen to intertwine her fingers with his. "Because it's her life, and she made it pretty clear that she wasn't going to stop working with him, just because I didn't like it, after I got it out of her."

"'Got it out of her'?" Lance repeated, looking at the girl across the table from him. "You mean that she didn't tell you willingly?" There was a shockingly protective glare in the Captain's eye and Felicity wondered briefly if it would be even more intimidating if he had his hat on, rather than if it was still sitting firmly on her head.

"We were arguing." Oliver admitted, and Felicity perked up, because this was the first time she'd heard this particular lie and there was always the issue that not remembering it could potentially land Oliver in jail. "She was going out late, deleting texts, lying to me… I thought I recognized those signs."

"You thought she was cheating on you?" The older man asked, eyes widening and Felicity schooled her features into 'displeased' rather than 'confused.'

"Yeah." Oliver sighed softly, threading his head through hers again to hold her near. "So I started backing away. Didn't offer dates or bring her food randomly at the office. Stopped texting her at random times because I was missing her or say her that made me think of her. I slept on the sofa every night of the ten days that it took me to find the courage to ask her."

"Tell me that you hit him for thinking that of you, Sweetheart." Lance whispered to her quietly, and she nodded without hearing him, dumbstruck because she'd never even thought about cheating, so she'd never even given any thought to how Oliver would react if she did. And it made her heart ache, because she knew she was hearing it exactly as it would happen.

"I asked if she wanted me to stop staying 'round." Oliver told them both with a small shrug of long past and unchangeable events, like he did at his memories of his youth. "If she wanted to end it - us. I didn't expect for her to start crying."

"Hey!" Felicity interrupted, partly because she knew she was staying too quiet for anyone to believe that the story was true, but mostly because the idea offended her. "I didn't start crying immediately! I started crying angry tears when you accused me of sleeping around like the whore that your employees believed me to be." She straightened her shoulders and offered him a smug grin. "And, hey, I wasn't the only one crying, Mr Tough guy!"

"Ah, young love." She heard Lance mutter from between them, almost inaudibly.

"Well, what do you expect?" Oliver argued back, leaning away from her like she'd insulted him. "I thought that you'd finally worked out that I wasn't good enough for you and had found someone who was! I thought that I was losing the one thing that I wanted to keep, that I couldn't bear to lose. Did you think I'd be happy about that?"

"Kids!" Lance snapped at them, slamming down his drained glass on the table between them. "Not in front of the children, please. Don't make me arrest you so you can hash this out in jail."

"Sorry, Da- _Captain!_" She felt herself flush pink. She could _not_ have just made that mistake. "I just don't like being falsely accused." Oliver just shrugged, like he didn't give a damn about what would not stop circling through her overactive brain.

"I get it." Lance said to Oliver more than to her, "Opening old wounds can hurt, especially when its on like this. But honestly, you've got one of the most loyal girl I've ever met beside you. You're an idiot for thinking that she's do that to you."

"I know." Oliver was nodded his head slowly when her phone vibrated in her pocket, alerting her to a text. "I know how loyal she is. I think that might be why it hurt so much to think of it."

"I assumed that's when you told him then," The police man question was directed at her, so Felicity looked up to meet his gaze as she fished her phone from her jeans. "Something along the lines of: 'I'm not cheating on you, you gigantic arse, I'm keeping the city safe at night with an alarming man in a green mask, one with a red mask and another with a ski mask, all with a perchance for outdated weapons, you hypocrite.'"

"Almost word for word." Oliver nodded in she peripheral vision as she opened the text. "Honestly, I'm having flashbacks!"

The text was from Oliver, which confused her greatly since she hadn't seen until then that his phone was lead on his thigh under the table._We'll talk about it later._ It read

"And you were okay with that?" There were wrinkles of confusion that spread over Lance's face as he continued to interrogate the billionaire in front of him. "You don't care about the fact that he's putting her in danger every night that they go out there?"

"I was relieved, rather selfishly, at first." He sighed, dipping his head down in 'shame'. "That is, until after the sex and I realised that the scar she'd told me she'd got when a moving box fell on her was a bullet wound, which brought around a whole new set of arguments about her safety."

"Oliver!" She screeched, slapping his arm, turning pink again as she pulled her hand from his.

"What?" He asked innocently, but she could see the glow of mischief in his eyes, the same one he got before he kidnapped her to the mansion or (successfully) convinced her to break her own 'no sex in the foundry rule'. The rule spanned back to when he was sleeping with Sara, and she's tried to keep it in place after they'd come together for as long as she could (three days short of two weeks, they lasted, but only because of how close to the office they were. Thea still didn't know about that, luckily, since she liked being able to look the girl in the eye) "It's not like it's not obvious that that happens, Love. It's sort of expected, to be honest. Besides, I never would have remembered that you even had that scar if you hadn't been adamant about playing contortionist."

"Queen!" Quentin yelled at him as she ducked her head into the collar of her coat to hide the blush from sight. That, at least, was not a lie. "Public! Children! Mental images! Knock it off, will ya?"

"Sorry, Captain." Oliver snorted, pulling her closer. "I think her rambling might just be infectious."

"Oops!" She laughed, getting as close as she got as close as she could to him, pressing up to bop her nose against his. "Did I forget to warn you?"

"Enough!" Their spectator demanded, but he was laughing to, so she didn't pull too far away from Oliver. "Be nauseatingly cute when you're alone. Stop forcing it on us lonely foak!" He looked across the table thoughtfully for a moment, like he was deciding whether or not to say something else. Eventually though, he reached across the table for Felicity's hand gripping her tightly. "And while I don't think you should right now, because I don't see enough of you as it is Sweetheart," He said softly, eyes flicking over to Oliver momentarily before they flew back to her and refused to move. "I would definitely recommend that that you get 'round to that, when you're ready for that," He smiled, leaning across the table to tap a finger under her chin affectionately. "Because I think you're my best shot as Grand-kids, Sweetheart."

"I, uh," Her eyes moved then, flicking over to meet Oliver's before moving back to the man before her. "I'm not actually your daughter, you know that, right? Even if I do have you down under 'next of kin' at Starling general, or if I've called you 'Dad' once or twice in my head before, and nearly done it out loud several times - which I am not admitting to doing here - you know I'm not, you know, Laurel, right now, didn't you?"

"Yes Felicity, I know you're not Laurel." Quentin laughed, but he seemed stable, to Felicity, and she'd texted him that morning to make sure that he'd taken his meds, and he looked fine, if just a little bit red from the wind. Maybe he's have looked healthier if she'd given him his hat back. "That doesn't mean that you're not my daughter thought. To me, at least. I don't a damn about genetics, or names or blood lines. I just… Even if it doesn't matter, I wish you were mine." He smiled at her shyly, shrugging a shoulder. "Not to sure how Dinah would have felt about having another baby so close to Sara, mind."

"Get up." She ordered, levering herself up onto shaky legs as she did.

"What?"

"Just do it. Right now." She brought her hand up to the brim of his hat on her head. "I'm still the Captain and the Captain's giving you an order. So, that means that you have to do it. So get up."

"Alright." He stood slowly, flicking his gaze, and his questions, to Oliver, as though he could help answer them. But the younger man just shrugged, equally as baffled. "Look. See? There you go. I'm standing! Are you happy now - Ofh!"

"Yes." Felicity whispered against his shoulder, her arms firmly locked around his neck. "I'm very happy." She tightened her arms, her throat closing up. "Thank you."

"Hey." He whispered, pulling her closer to hug her back tightly. "None of that, okay? You don't need to thank someone for loving you. They should do it automatically." He pushed her back minutely, smiling at her wiping at the lone bead of fluid that had escaped her eye. "He doesn't deserve to have his name attached to someone like you."

"No one does." Oliver said softly from behind her, his hand pressed into her lower back. "No one on earth is good enough for that. But especially not him."

"Maybe you ought to change that." Lance suggested over the top of her head.

"Maybe you should stop planning the wedding because don't I get a say in this?" She asked, turning her head to watch Oliver laugh.

"Deciding vote is yours 'Licity." He promised. "Whatever that may be."

"Honestly?" She asked, untangling herself from Lance as she stepped back, wiping at her make up with the hand that didn't automatically reach back to take Oliver's. "I really want to get the Captain to try that archery stool we past earlier. I'm pretty sure that it's just there to try and catch out the Arrow - as if he'd be so stupid - but I really want one of those giraffes, and both of us are crap shots. As you proved earlier." In reality, he'd missed the targets purposely with all three arrows, too keep up appearances, and the irritation on his face at screwing up the one thing that he's deemed himself good at, was far better than the stuffed toy giraffe that the stool was offering for a bullseye. (She'd distracted him with a list of _other_ things that he was good at, so no one was really complaining.)

"Really?" Lance laughed. "You sure you're not looking for people you can laugh with the Arrow about their terrible archery skills?" He asked knowingly.

"Positive." She laughed, tightening her fingers around Oliver's. _Be nice._ It warned

"I'll see if I can't scare the toy out of the guy with my badge." Lance told her, heading off in the direction of the stool in a slow amble, Oliver and Felicity following behind him. "So - the Arrow doesn't let you play with his bow and then?" He asked, conversationally.

"No." She laughed happily at the joke she had yet to make. "I think that Oliver would really have an issue with me working with the Arrow if there was any of that going on." And OLiver growed lowly at that, which had both Felicity and Quentin falling to pieces, sides aching from the manic laughter. It wasn't until Oliver's own, deeper laugh joined in, about the same time as Lance decided to use the park bench to hold himself up, that Felicity pushed up on her toes, bringing herself nose to nose with her vigilante.

"You're jealous of yourself." She reminded him in a whisper, leaning herself against his front and staring up at him. "God I love you so much."

"I love you too." He laughed softly as their laughter subsided, wrapping her close in the chilly air, warming her flesh with his heat and his heart with her presence. "Even in the Captain's hat."

And he nudged her nose with his as he kissed her, one large hand framing her chin, while the other whipped the hat from her head.

* * *

><p>So, this came from the realisation I made when my local fair came 'round, that poor Oliver wouldn't be able to do any of the archery stools because secret identities! It sort of took a whole different spin to it, because I'm a sucker for Daddy!Lance, but there's a line in there somewhere relating to that, but that's it.<p>

IIHH. X


End file.
